Last night I enjoyed a balmy summer’s night in Oxford watching England win against India in an important 20 20 match at two pubs at both ends of the High, having invested a small fortune in car parking charges. Both the match and the nostalgia was worth the expenditure. The breakdown disaster of last year was not repeated as I commenced my journey to Portsmouth
On Saturday I had returned from Durham’s win against Lancashire via Sunderland to fill up with petrol and replace the vacuum flash which I had carelessly dropped on concrete. I had then systematically set about preparing for the journey. One travel bag with tins of rice, beans, crab, salmon and sardines, packets of soup, Kitchen roll and rest I cannot remember. The picnic utensils were placed in back compartment of the cool box with tin and bottle openers plus kitchen towel.. I prepared Tupperware type boxes for the remaining strawberries and watermelon, the latter cut into chunks with other boxes for lettuce and cucumber, olives and sliced gherkins and tomatoes. I left buttering rolls and filling them with meats and the rest of the coleslaw until the morning.
There was a little ironing to do and as on the trip to Brighton and Hove I did not pack the trousers and shirts of long and short sleeve but placed a cover of them and then placed the cover over a seat in car. I would take only one other bag and the rucksack. The this bag would take the pyjamas, underwear, track suit bottoms, clock lap top computer, headphones and mobile phone charger, plus one new and unopened shirt. The haversack would take the paperwork for the trip, personal information I like to carry with me, a book to read, a couple of DVD’s, sun creams, spare pair of glasses and such like and the unfilled thermos flask.
Some of the plants were watered, I say some because there was a single bright flash of lightening filled by the crack of thunder overhead, then distant but a torrential downpour which lasted less than half an hour but was disconcerting.
There was also paperwork, some upsetting. First the insurance wanted return of the old certificate before releasing the new or a declaration that it had been destroyed or misplaced. I searched high and low but could not find it although I knew it had not been lost. I wrote a letter and completed the form ready for posting in the morning. Then there was a problem with House and contents insurance and as it was after six on a Saturday before I got round to the unopened correspondence I could not resolves the issue which I will not bother to go into now.
Now I have briefly summarised it is difficult to understand why all this took until midnight with several walkabouts in the house thinking over what I had done and was still to do. I did need to work out how to get to the car Ferry although getting to the Travel Lodge. could be left until Sunday night or Monday morning I also took time off to watch the Cardiff Singer of the Year final round. I had also intended to watch a DVD but the machine has developed a sound problem which together with the top of the washing machine replacement I will leave on return over the three weeks or so before the hectic month of July with two trips and a jazz festival and more cricket.
For once the following morning went exactly as hoped for. There was only myself to get up, rolls to be filled, cold water for the night wakings in a flask, loading to cool bag with contents prepared the night before and doing the final checks that I had everything. In fact I left behind a pair of casual trousers I had planned and binned the everyday shows which I had discovered were in dreadful condition. I was to motor to the midlands for lunch without stopping so I had a coffee fro breakfast.
There was great joy in being able to drive with a cold airflow system and a radio CD player. I have been listening to a T Rex best of CD over the past few days. Children of the Revolution and all that. I must list some other hits. He was a limited singer and the format of his songs was the same with repeating chants with back up singers Metal Guru endlessly. It is difficult to hear what he is saying and his slogans are now dated but reflect the times in which they were created. I will switch to the more articulate and creative Bob Dylan best of at some point. For the start of the journey it was Classical FM appropriate for a Sunday morning. I stopped at the new Azda for cash and had to advise a little old later with shopping bag standing by the unopened huge glass doors that it was Sunday and 24 hour shopping applied between first thing Monday and closure on Saturday evening. I wondered how far she had walked as there is no housing immediately nearby. I was tempted to offer a lift but I needed to get somewhere for lunch by midday. The journey and the lunch were excellent. A chicken and bacon salad with a baguette accompanied by a J20 and then a coffee. I was on my journey again around 2pm and in Oxford about 4.30.
I had joined the M1 having travelled the A19 and A1 before lunch and then followed the route which becomes the M40 for a while and which took passed the road to Silverstone where the previous year I had been held up because of a car fire and which I had bypassed by coming off and the going back onto the motorway as convenient for me the accident and fire had occurred under the roundabout. I had stopped at the first lay-by after having turned of the road on to that leading to the M40 and at this point the starter motor had failed in the roundabout. I had remembered vivid my experience of standing there waving at the traffic to avoid a collision and my relief when the AA arrived, and then got the vehicle jump started so I was able to drive to Bicester when it was garaged over the weekend and I was given a hire car to complete my journey down to an Innkeepers for the weekend and the finals day of the 20 20 at the Rose Bowl. On the Sunday I gone over to the Isle of Wight for the day, whereas this year I looked forward to spending three nights and on the Monday before setting off to Burford for the night stop I had spent half a day at the Naval dockyard where I was given a year long ticket after signing off the income tax relief.
This time there was high drama and my destination the Travel Lodge just off the Peartree roundabout was just off the A34 which continued to near Newbury and on close to Winchester before joining the M3 to the outskirts of Southampton when the M27 took me to where I was staying in Portsmouth.
It was a beautiful evening as I arrived at the site which next to a holiday Inn. Did I not stay here once before. I have stayed at the Peartree Travel Lodge before now once during a Drug Advisory Service visit for the Department of Health although I had stayed with the team in hotel close to Walton Street and Ruskin College. And we had gone out for some great meals in the evenings at Government expense. After booking in and unpacking what I needed, leaving the rest in the car I decided to go in search of a sport bar or pub to watch England play India in the must win match of the World 20 20 cup. I knew car parking was impossible in Oxford except at official sites so first I went to see if the Park and Ride scheme nearby was in operation. As anticipated it was by the last bus back was at seven. I headed for Summertown where I lived for two years in my first rented accommodation as an employed child care officer from 1964 to 1966 and where there was car parking behind the high street where there was now restaurants from around the world in what was a villagey area with BBC Oxford and the headquarters of OXFAM, the Oxford Committee for Famine relief. The car park was expensive as anticipated so I decided that I might as well park in the town centre, not realising it would cost even more. This was my first mistake. The second was on the way to the Walton Street car park on impulse I went for that at the bus station which proved to be underground and where the charges were lethal £3 for the first hours and over £7 for three. I should have driven out and onto Walton Street but took the hour which would be sufficient time to find out if there was a cricket showing bar in the immediate town centre. I passed a pub which I did use from time to time when at Ruskin and having rooms in Walton Place and then in college building in Walton Street during my second year.
Close to the cinema and a popular French bistro, especially for dinner parties out there a miserable atmosphere Euro Bar with ground level seat looking up to an above standing head TV and with steps then up to the bar. In was a curious place staffed by young women with European accents and where the drinks were expensive. One young man made do with a pint of iced water. England were put into bat by India and Luke Wright was out almost immediately , however Bopara 37 and then Petersen 46 scored well and reasonable quickly. As the hour of car parking ended I returned to the car and moved onto the original destination where £5 covered the charges until 8pm and then from 8pm until 8 am in the morning and returned to watch the rest of the English Innings where they reached 153 six about twenty to thirties runs short of a winning total. The problem is that middle order, including captain Collingwood were unable to move along quickly or hit 4s and 6s with the regularity required..
It looked a fantastic night outside and it was Oxford and it seemed wrong to be sitting there in an atmosphere I was not enjoying so I decided to walk the High to Magdalen Bridge. Sunday evenings in most shopping centres away from pubs and restaurants, and other recreational facilities. However this was a university in term time so there were students heading for a function at the Union, some from society meetings, or activities with friends, most busy bicycling. Oxford is usually full of people from lands far and near. There were always students learning English or being finished, but then nothing like the influx taking causal and menial jobs. The only Chinese/Asians one would see were serving in restaurants or glimpsed behind a half opened kitchen door. On Sunday I observe red several pairs of Chinese far East students and a couple of mixed relationships which suggests the Colleges are doing good business in this respect. In addition to Examination Schools there are only four colleges in the High All Souls which does not take undergraduates and Fellows are elected and included Sir Christopher Wren and Lawrence of Arabia and current John Redwood the right wing Conservative Member of Parliament ,Queens attended by Henry V, and University with Shelley and Clem Atlee and CS Lewis, Bill Clinton, and Bob Hawke together with Stephen Hawkins as alumni.
And Magdalen where on May day from its tower the choir sing at dawn Cardinal Wolsey, John Betjeman and Oscar Wilde, I have seen his room, could say I was there. So could beyond the Fringe Dudley Moore.
Having got as far as the bridge I could not resist going on a little further to the small village of shops and pubs with St Hilda’s once Ladies only college on the left and one of two roads leading up to Headington Hill, the former home of the notorious owner of the Daily Mirror Sir Robert Maxwell and which has become part of the new Oxford University which developed from the Technical Colleges across the way, and the on to Headington centre where I lived for over a year before moving to London and where in Headington Old Village was located Ruskin Colleges other building where at the Rookery I had lived for my first year. In the area across from the Bridge and the now silent punts to one side and the meadow and the Botanical Gardens with the walks down to Christ Church and its Meadow and down to the Thames called Isis here I had taken to lunch a student friend of a friend at St Hilda’s who had stayed only for the main course and then got back to work, cutting me adrift such was the evidence of the cultural and educational difference between us and that there was nothing between us to sustain further interest. I went to see if the eating place was still. T was but under a different guise. Later on the return journey after passing Shepherd and Woodward the university suppliers of gowns and ties and scarves which made me up a large red scarf to represent Ruskin and from where I hired the gown and white bow tie required to be worn before one could sit a public examination in the Examination schools, I been to lunch at a first floor Chinese restaurant with my friend from St Hilda’s (not the friend of the friend if you see what I mean but the friend) established on two walks across the Pennines from Liverpool to Hull over Christmas and New Year organised by the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Now some fifty years later it was a Thai restaurant.
Anyway this is a monumental digression at the village across from the Bridge there were three public houses. One advertised some live Irish music that very evening but a little way further on the other side of the road where there were a number of drinkers and smokers enjoying the warm evening air, The Old Black Horse is its name there is the most attractive looking sports pub I have encountered in many a day. There was a choice of viewing areas and I opted for a the wooden walled upper room where blinds masked the light from large windows not to affect the large screen projection. Other screen although large and offering high definition quality were less than a half perhaps a quarter of this one. There was only one couple, she more interested in him than the cricket when I arrived but later I was surrounded by part of a cricket playing team, complete with whites and bats and one sporting a multi coloured cap reminding of Brideshead days. The match was coming to an end and as it did he excitement increased. Sidebottom had taken two of the early Indian wickets and this had slowed down as well as the wicket the run chase. Swann had two wickets leaving at 85 for five, leaving Dhoni and Pathan to get the seventy off runs required. Some tight bowling from Broad 4 for 21 as well as Swann 2 for 28 won England the match and survival until the following day as India were all out for 150 just three runs short.
On the return journey I had been tempted to go through to the Broad and return to the car along Beaumont Street with the Randolph Hotel is located, the Playhouse, the Ashmolean and my former dentist. Instead I went onto Carfax and turned into the pedestrian only area where the Kardomah Tea rooms used to be. The tea room of the same name in Swansea became more famous because Dylan Thomas and friends would meet. On either side there is a small lane off where there were former pub haunts. One on the right was a known haunt of city girls who would hand jive to the Twist and where with a former army sergeant then at Ruskin we failed dismally to get off with two we chatted up. Admittedly I was inexperienced hopeless of similar age to them whereas he was experienced but ten years or more my senior. It is now a restaurant and the Kardomah long since vanished into a shopping precinct. And so the flood of memories then and now overwhelmed the night. I was tempted to stay out, go for a drink, remember more but I wanted an early start for the next adventuresome day.
On Saturday I had returned from Durham’s win against Lancashire via Sunderland to fill up with petrol and replace the vacuum flash which I had carelessly dropped on concrete. I had then systematically set about preparing for the journey. One travel bag with tins of rice, beans, crab, salmon and sardines, packets of soup, Kitchen roll and rest I cannot remember. The picnic utensils were placed in back compartment of the cool box with tin and bottle openers plus kitchen towel.. I prepared Tupperware type boxes for the remaining strawberries and watermelon, the latter cut into chunks with other boxes for lettuce and cucumber, olives and sliced gherkins and tomatoes. I left buttering rolls and filling them with meats and the rest of the coleslaw until the morning.
There was a little ironing to do and as on the trip to Brighton and Hove I did not pack the trousers and shirts of long and short sleeve but placed a cover of them and then placed the cover over a seat in car. I would take only one other bag and the rucksack. The this bag would take the pyjamas, underwear, track suit bottoms, clock lap top computer, headphones and mobile phone charger, plus one new and unopened shirt. The haversack would take the paperwork for the trip, personal information I like to carry with me, a book to read, a couple of DVD’s, sun creams, spare pair of glasses and such like and the unfilled thermos flask.
Some of the plants were watered, I say some because there was a single bright flash of lightening filled by the crack of thunder overhead, then distant but a torrential downpour which lasted less than half an hour but was disconcerting.
There was also paperwork, some upsetting. First the insurance wanted return of the old certificate before releasing the new or a declaration that it had been destroyed or misplaced. I searched high and low but could not find it although I knew it had not been lost. I wrote a letter and completed the form ready for posting in the morning. Then there was a problem with House and contents insurance and as it was after six on a Saturday before I got round to the unopened correspondence I could not resolves the issue which I will not bother to go into now.
Now I have briefly summarised it is difficult to understand why all this took until midnight with several walkabouts in the house thinking over what I had done and was still to do. I did need to work out how to get to the car Ferry although getting to the Travel Lodge. could be left until Sunday night or Monday morning I also took time off to watch the Cardiff Singer of the Year final round. I had also intended to watch a DVD but the machine has developed a sound problem which together with the top of the washing machine replacement I will leave on return over the three weeks or so before the hectic month of July with two trips and a jazz festival and more cricket.
For once the following morning went exactly as hoped for. There was only myself to get up, rolls to be filled, cold water for the night wakings in a flask, loading to cool bag with contents prepared the night before and doing the final checks that I had everything. In fact I left behind a pair of casual trousers I had planned and binned the everyday shows which I had discovered were in dreadful condition. I was to motor to the midlands for lunch without stopping so I had a coffee fro breakfast.
There was great joy in being able to drive with a cold airflow system and a radio CD player. I have been listening to a T Rex best of CD over the past few days. Children of the Revolution and all that. I must list some other hits. He was a limited singer and the format of his songs was the same with repeating chants with back up singers Metal Guru endlessly. It is difficult to hear what he is saying and his slogans are now dated but reflect the times in which they were created. I will switch to the more articulate and creative Bob Dylan best of at some point. For the start of the journey it was Classical FM appropriate for a Sunday morning. I stopped at the new Azda for cash and had to advise a little old later with shopping bag standing by the unopened huge glass doors that it was Sunday and 24 hour shopping applied between first thing Monday and closure on Saturday evening. I wondered how far she had walked as there is no housing immediately nearby. I was tempted to offer a lift but I needed to get somewhere for lunch by midday. The journey and the lunch were excellent. A chicken and bacon salad with a baguette accompanied by a J20 and then a coffee. I was on my journey again around 2pm and in Oxford about 4.30.
I had joined the M1 having travelled the A19 and A1 before lunch and then followed the route which becomes the M40 for a while and which took passed the road to Silverstone where the previous year I had been held up because of a car fire and which I had bypassed by coming off and the going back onto the motorway as convenient for me the accident and fire had occurred under the roundabout. I had stopped at the first lay-by after having turned of the road on to that leading to the M40 and at this point the starter motor had failed in the roundabout. I had remembered vivid my experience of standing there waving at the traffic to avoid a collision and my relief when the AA arrived, and then got the vehicle jump started so I was able to drive to Bicester when it was garaged over the weekend and I was given a hire car to complete my journey down to an Innkeepers for the weekend and the finals day of the 20 20 at the Rose Bowl. On the Sunday I gone over to the Isle of Wight for the day, whereas this year I looked forward to spending three nights and on the Monday before setting off to Burford for the night stop I had spent half a day at the Naval dockyard where I was given a year long ticket after signing off the income tax relief.
This time there was high drama and my destination the Travel Lodge just off the Peartree roundabout was just off the A34 which continued to near Newbury and on close to Winchester before joining the M3 to the outskirts of Southampton when the M27 took me to where I was staying in Portsmouth.
It was a beautiful evening as I arrived at the site which next to a holiday Inn. Did I not stay here once before. I have stayed at the Peartree Travel Lodge before now once during a Drug Advisory Service visit for the Department of Health although I had stayed with the team in hotel close to Walton Street and Ruskin College. And we had gone out for some great meals in the evenings at Government expense. After booking in and unpacking what I needed, leaving the rest in the car I decided to go in search of a sport bar or pub to watch England play India in the must win match of the World 20 20 cup. I knew car parking was impossible in Oxford except at official sites so first I went to see if the Park and Ride scheme nearby was in operation. As anticipated it was by the last bus back was at seven. I headed for Summertown where I lived for two years in my first rented accommodation as an employed child care officer from 1964 to 1966 and where there was car parking behind the high street where there was now restaurants from around the world in what was a villagey area with BBC Oxford and the headquarters of OXFAM, the Oxford Committee for Famine relief. The car park was expensive as anticipated so I decided that I might as well park in the town centre, not realising it would cost even more. This was my first mistake. The second was on the way to the Walton Street car park on impulse I went for that at the bus station which proved to be underground and where the charges were lethal £3 for the first hours and over £7 for three. I should have driven out and onto Walton Street but took the hour which would be sufficient time to find out if there was a cricket showing bar in the immediate town centre. I passed a pub which I did use from time to time when at Ruskin and having rooms in Walton Place and then in college building in Walton Street during my second year.
Close to the cinema and a popular French bistro, especially for dinner parties out there a miserable atmosphere Euro Bar with ground level seat looking up to an above standing head TV and with steps then up to the bar. In was a curious place staffed by young women with European accents and where the drinks were expensive. One young man made do with a pint of iced water. England were put into bat by India and Luke Wright was out almost immediately , however Bopara 37 and then Petersen 46 scored well and reasonable quickly. As the hour of car parking ended I returned to the car and moved onto the original destination where £5 covered the charges until 8pm and then from 8pm until 8 am in the morning and returned to watch the rest of the English Innings where they reached 153 six about twenty to thirties runs short of a winning total. The problem is that middle order, including captain Collingwood were unable to move along quickly or hit 4s and 6s with the regularity required..
It looked a fantastic night outside and it was Oxford and it seemed wrong to be sitting there in an atmosphere I was not enjoying so I decided to walk the High to Magdalen Bridge. Sunday evenings in most shopping centres away from pubs and restaurants, and other recreational facilities. However this was a university in term time so there were students heading for a function at the Union, some from society meetings, or activities with friends, most busy bicycling. Oxford is usually full of people from lands far and near. There were always students learning English or being finished, but then nothing like the influx taking causal and menial jobs. The only Chinese/Asians one would see were serving in restaurants or glimpsed behind a half opened kitchen door. On Sunday I observe red several pairs of Chinese far East students and a couple of mixed relationships which suggests the Colleges are doing good business in this respect. In addition to Examination Schools there are only four colleges in the High All Souls which does not take undergraduates and Fellows are elected and included Sir Christopher Wren and Lawrence of Arabia and current John Redwood the right wing Conservative Member of Parliament ,Queens attended by Henry V, and University with Shelley and Clem Atlee and CS Lewis, Bill Clinton, and Bob Hawke together with Stephen Hawkins as alumni.
And Magdalen where on May day from its tower the choir sing at dawn Cardinal Wolsey, John Betjeman and Oscar Wilde, I have seen his room, could say I was there. So could beyond the Fringe Dudley Moore.
Having got as far as the bridge I could not resist going on a little further to the small village of shops and pubs with St Hilda’s once Ladies only college on the left and one of two roads leading up to Headington Hill, the former home of the notorious owner of the Daily Mirror Sir Robert Maxwell and which has become part of the new Oxford University which developed from the Technical Colleges across the way, and the on to Headington centre where I lived for over a year before moving to London and where in Headington Old Village was located Ruskin Colleges other building where at the Rookery I had lived for my first year. In the area across from the Bridge and the now silent punts to one side and the meadow and the Botanical Gardens with the walks down to Christ Church and its Meadow and down to the Thames called Isis here I had taken to lunch a student friend of a friend at St Hilda’s who had stayed only for the main course and then got back to work, cutting me adrift such was the evidence of the cultural and educational difference between us and that there was nothing between us to sustain further interest. I went to see if the eating place was still. T was but under a different guise. Later on the return journey after passing Shepherd and Woodward the university suppliers of gowns and ties and scarves which made me up a large red scarf to represent Ruskin and from where I hired the gown and white bow tie required to be worn before one could sit a public examination in the Examination schools, I been to lunch at a first floor Chinese restaurant with my friend from St Hilda’s (not the friend of the friend if you see what I mean but the friend) established on two walks across the Pennines from Liverpool to Hull over Christmas and New Year organised by the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Now some fifty years later it was a Thai restaurant.
Anyway this is a monumental digression at the village across from the Bridge there were three public houses. One advertised some live Irish music that very evening but a little way further on the other side of the road where there were a number of drinkers and smokers enjoying the warm evening air, The Old Black Horse is its name there is the most attractive looking sports pub I have encountered in many a day. There was a choice of viewing areas and I opted for a the wooden walled upper room where blinds masked the light from large windows not to affect the large screen projection. Other screen although large and offering high definition quality were less than a half perhaps a quarter of this one. There was only one couple, she more interested in him than the cricket when I arrived but later I was surrounded by part of a cricket playing team, complete with whites and bats and one sporting a multi coloured cap reminding of Brideshead days. The match was coming to an end and as it did he excitement increased. Sidebottom had taken two of the early Indian wickets and this had slowed down as well as the wicket the run chase. Swann had two wickets leaving at 85 for five, leaving Dhoni and Pathan to get the seventy off runs required. Some tight bowling from Broad 4 for 21 as well as Swann 2 for 28 won England the match and survival until the following day as India were all out for 150 just three runs short.
On the return journey I had been tempted to go through to the Broad and return to the car along Beaumont Street with the Randolph Hotel is located, the Playhouse, the Ashmolean and my former dentist. Instead I went onto Carfax and turned into the pedestrian only area where the Kardomah Tea rooms used to be. The tea room of the same name in Swansea became more famous because Dylan Thomas and friends would meet. On either side there is a small lane off where there were former pub haunts. One on the right was a known haunt of city girls who would hand jive to the Twist and where with a former army sergeant then at Ruskin we failed dismally to get off with two we chatted up. Admittedly I was inexperienced hopeless of similar age to them whereas he was experienced but ten years or more my senior. It is now a restaurant and the Kardomah long since vanished into a shopping precinct. And so the flood of memories then and now overwhelmed the night. I was tempted to stay out, go for a drink, remember more but I wanted an early start for the next adventuresome day.
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